A mysterious stranger with a conscience left a cashier’s check for $3,255 at Dallas’ Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, explaining in a note that he was trying to atone for crimes of his past.
Two other times this year, the financially strapped church has had scatterings of $20 bills turn up unexplained in the vestibule, apparently stuffed through a gap in locked front doors.
Though no note came with those donations, the Rev. Canon Victoria Heard speculates they were from the same man.
Regardless, she’s grateful.
“It was a godsend, especially in the middle of the winter when our fuel bills are the highest,” said Heard, canon-in-residence at the Far East Dallas church.
An envelope containing the cashier’s check, $13 in cash and the note was discovered in a back pew on Jan. 11.
The man signed his note with a barely legible “Michael.” His last name was on the check, but Heard declined to share it, saying she could not violate a “confession situation.”
Church leaders have searched membership rolls and asked former and current members, and no one knows anybody by the name on the check.
The handwritten note begins, “I paid every single debt I had in life but could not find or locate 14 of them or I wasn’t sure.”
Then it lists 14 crimes, including “White Rock robbery – $100,” “Stolen car at woodmeadow – $800,” “A set of knives from a fellow soldier in Iraq – $300” and “A lot of CD’s in a velcro pouch from an ex-friend in Tyler Texas when I was a kid – $300.”
Yet another crime mentioned is “Eckerd’s (for stolen candy) – $25.” The note adds that “Eckerd’s is now CVS pharmacy.”
The 14 listed amounts total $3,268 – equal to the cashier’s check combined with the $13 found in the envelope.